The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry – Episode 88

🎧 Dental group practice guru and industry legend, Dr. Marc B. Cooper, joins the podcast to share his wisdom for leaders and much more. Dr. Cooper is the founder of The Mastery Company and MBC Wisdom for Leaders. Visit www.RequestingWisdom.com to learn more about Dr. Cooper. Read his article: Change Before You Have To and learn what his 2022 predictions are HERE.

Key takeaways from this podcast:

💡 Marc tells us about his early days
💡 The future of DSOs and why some are not prepared
💡 Medical dental integration
💡 Challenges for DSOs
💡 His current body of work on aging

This podcast is sponsored by Sunbit – to find out more visit https://sunbit.com/dental

If you like our podcast, please give us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on iTunes https://apple.co/2Nejsfa and a Thumbs Up on YouTube.

Our podcast series brings you dental support and emerging dental group practice analysis, conversation, trends, news and events. Listen to leaders in the DSO and emerging dental group space talk about their challenges, successes, and the future of group dentistry. The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry has listeners across North & South America, Australia, Europe, and Asia. If you like our show, tell a friend or a colleague.

 

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Full Transcript:

Bill Neumann:

Thank you to Sunbit for sponsoring this episode of the Group Dentistry Now Show. Sunbit is the preferred buy now, pay later technology for everyday needs and services. Sunbit eases the stress of getting dental care by offering patients access to fast, fair, and transparent payment options. Sunbit’s technology approves over 85% of patients to get their dental care needs today and pay over time with the simple 30 second application process requiring no hard credit check. Sunbit is offered by over 10,000 locations, including one in three auto dealership service centers, dental offices, optical practices, veterinary clinics, and specialty healthcare services. See why Sunbit is adding over 500 dental practices per month. Visit sunbit.com/dental for more information. That’s sunbit.com/dental.

Bill Neumann:

I’d like to welcome everybody to the Group Dentistry Now Show. Hi, I am Bill Neumann. Thanks everybody for joining us today, whether you’ve seen the show before, or whether this is your first time, welcome. We always have great guests or we wouldn’t have a great show. So the next guest I’ve known for, I believe it’s been about a decade now and he is well known in the group practice space. I don’t think it was even called DSOs back when Dr. Cooper first got into the space. The acronyms have changed a little bit. The models have changed a little bit, but I’d like to introduce everybody to Dr. Mark B. Cooper. Dr. Cooper, welcome to the Group Dentistry Now Show. Thanks for being here.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

My pleasure. And it really is my pleasure. It’s going to be fun for me.

Bill Neumann:

Yeah, this is an honor for me too. And I just want to give a little bit of perspective on when I first met Dr. Cooper. So this goes back nine, 10 years, somewhere around there. It was in Scottsdale, Arizona and I found out about the Mastery Company Summit. I’m not going to guess on the number of people there, but I would say it was between 70 to a 100, there was a good crowd. We were talking about, I don’t think DSO was thrown around then, it was group practice. It was an MSO and not a DSO then, if I remember correctly, but it was really an interesting group of people. And if you haven’t met Dr. Cooper or heard of him, he is well known in the industry, a veteran polarizing, if you don’t mind me saying that. He has his opinions, which we’re going to hear today, but always honest, which is what I like about him. So again, Dr. Cooper, if you want to maybe paint the picture of your background in the industry and maybe even before you became a dentist, you’re a periodontist by education, correct?

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

Yes.

Bill Neumann:

Yeah. So I’m going to let you start off with your history.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

Oh, okay. So I’ll start off with a saying by Joseph Campbell, “If you see your steps clearly on the path, it’s the wrong path.” So how I ended up where I am today was unable to be forecast standing back then. So my history zooms and zags, and goes to different places and sometimes may make sense or not, but it certainly makes sense today.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

I began dental school before most people watching this or hearing this were born, 1966, and it was the height of the Vietnam War. It’s hard to imagine, it was the sixties and it’s hard to imagine it was Woodstock, that was where I was adulting in terms of my future. Went to Temple Dental School until 1970, went out to Seattle, Washington to Solhaug’s program and got also an advanced degree in immunology and academics was going to be my career, basic science research.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

During the Vietnam War, when my freshman class, one person got drafted out of my dental school class, and all of us panicked. It’s like, “Holy shh, what are we going to do? They could come and get us.” So there was a plan that you could sign up and that if you would get time and grade, and then you got to serve, but they wouldn’t take you out of school. So I figured if I went to school for a 100 years, the war would be over and they’d let me alone, but that didn’t happen.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

From there, my graduate training, I went into SAC, MAC base in North Carolina where Walking Tall and Ku Klux Klan both existed and I had my VW bus with three to bed on the back. So that’s kind of how that environment, but I loved it. I learned so much, I really trained myself to be a really good clinical, technical periodontist.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

I practiced in Bellevue, Washington before Microsoft, so it was a bedroom community at Porter Practice, incredibly wonderful human being. And I really learned about partnership from him. And that was really interesting to note that most partnerships fail in dentistry and this one had certain essence and elements that really worked and I kept those in my notes to say. This was when I eventually worked on partnerships.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

And then from there, it was the seventies. And then in the seventies when you’re already successful, because dentistry at that point was mostly fee for service and high end. And it was wonderful. I explored other avenues in terms of my own development as a human being. So I got involved with things of transformational programs and I was in enthralled by them because they were able to touch me in a particular place that being successful monetarily and socially was just not touching. And so I spent many years inside of that channel and actually for the first eight, nine of those was a volunteer director, seminar director, for some of these companies. So I learned their models, I learned their technologies.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

So here I was practicing periodontics, doing okay. And then I was doing this and I had, maybe this goes back a long ways, but there was a very hot consulting company at that time called Mercer and Company and Rick was my coach and I walk in and he says, “Half ass is Half ass, you’ve got to choose what you want to do. You can’t do consulting and you can’t do dentistry because neither are very successful.” So it was a moment in time when I just had to make a choice. I was 38 years old, I think, or something like that, family. And I just said, “Okay, this is what I really want to do.” But I had been doing some beforehand because I had fellow dentists who were not being very successful in staff management, in leadership and ownership. And so I went and did in-house consulting for them, but it was more pro bono and friendliness thing, but they were referring people, so I knew that what I was contributing had merit and value in the industry at that time, solo practice, individual paper, we call systems, it was then.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

And then over time I got involved in consulting and was able to join a company called Technico where they were about 61 consultants using basically the same consulting models. But these guys were working with IBM and Hewlett Packard and Merck, and it’s like, “Oh, okay.”

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

I had some expertise in communication so they began to use me inside of their larger accounts to deliver communication training, conflict resolution, some of the stuff that I had learned to do. And before I knew it, I was coaching at the C-level and sometimes the board level. My education got very broad in how organizational structures worked. This is where it gets complex, and I’m sorry to take so much time, but there was a moment in time when I was doing a fair amount of work with hospital and hospital systems and physician groups. And I was there when managed care rolled in and I saw the aggregation and merger occur at a really rapid pace, hospitals buying physician practices and building on buildings. And it was like, “Okay, we need to aggregate.” And then I looked over at dentistry and I said, “Oh, oh, this has got to happen here.” So I went out before it was popular and began to say, “The future of dentistry is going to be, at that time which you mentioned, was a managed group practice.” That’s what it was called, MSL.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

I didn’t have a lot of applause. First event I did was in Tacoma, or maybe, yeah, I think it was, the Pacific Dental Society. And Delta had just reduced everything to its PPO and people were crazy. And I’m speaking about this and they’re all want to go to war with signs. And this is the future. And the only way you’re going to get an economy of scale is to group, because that’s the way it works. And didn’t receive a lot, as I said, a lot of applause. It was 3% of the market when I started and when I sold the DEO, Dental Entrepreneur Organization, it was over 30%. I said, “Okay.” I think that catches you all up in that domain of dentistry.

Bill Neumann:

It sure does. What point did you start Mastery Company? What was that timeframe when you started that, and who were some of the groups, if you can drop any names, if not, just talk about, because your goal there was to teach them how to create these MSOs back then and how to scale up? So I’d love to talk about maybe some of the names we might know or some of the groups, if you’re able to talk about that.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

They probably don’t exist anymore because they’ve been aggregated into something else. I mean, where I was really at my best was the smaller regional five to seven locations, getting them effective in terms of really learning how to be executives rather than dentist control freaks, and having to move to a mindset where they could deal and all of that. Because, again, my strong corporate background of working with hospital systems and Fortune 300 companies gave me a view of who they needed to be in order to be successful at a much larger group expression. So that was my focus. I loved that work, that was fun to do. That’s how the DEO started, actually. Got a bunch of guys with a couple of few practices and said, “This is not going to survive in these waters. You have to learn how to think newly about how you’re going to do a much larger enterprise.” And everybody wanted to leave the chair, so that was not a problem to talk about that.

Bill Neumann:

Right. Great point about getting out of the chair. Is this the way, as you look at 2022, is this where you thought things might end up or, and not end up, but is this where you thought things would be right now, when you look back at the beginning of Mastery, or did you think it would progress quicker, slower, differently?

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

That’s an interesting question. Mastery began in that company, but the initial was MBC because that was cool back in the ’80s to use initials, and they all thought it was my name initials, which is true, but I always say, “making brains change,” MBC. It evolved, it’s had numbers of different names and different expressions over the years, it’s gone left, it’s gone right. I’d rather work from the future backwards on this question than come from here forward. That might be more opportune for people to look backward from a future and this future hasn’t happened. And if you don’t mind a little scat logic language, I could be full of shit. So you have to take it with a grain of salt, because this is how I see it. I think that’s one of my areas of mastery is being able to forecast, “Aha, I’m going to go there. I’m going to go with…” As Wayne Gretzky said, “Where the puck is going to be.”And I think I’ve been pretty good about it, particularly in the dental marketplace.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

I think the essence have a shelf life. I mean, I don’t think it’s bad. I don’t think it’s wrong. I just think like everything else, because I look at the whole healthcare entity and how it’s operating with all its different parts. I understand systems thinking and dentistry doesn’t believe it’s a subsystem of the healthcare system. Doesn’t believe it. They’re doing their thing and, “Leave me alone and we have our societies and we like to complain.” I understand all of that. But when you’re looking at the $200 billion in dentistry as composed to the $4 trillion in healthcare and dentistry can resolve so many issues on the front end of the healthcare system, the pressures are going to be enormous. And they’re starting to make inroads. There are medical dental concerns that are integrated concerns that are arriving. I believe Thorn’s way ahead of the pack. I think North America Dental Group is way ahead of the pack. I think there’re smaller ones that are now getting engaged. It’s out of the box.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

I had a call with some CEOs of insurance companies and Humana was talking about building a hygiene department. Okay, they’re there. Dentistry is not there. Dentistry is a subsystem of the meta system, which is healthcare. The meta system always wins. So, DSOs as they’re modeled now, this is going to get me into real trouble, Bill. Just want you to appreciate this.

Bill Neumann:

This is great.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

They’ll have a very difficult time changing. They’re not flexible at all in terms of structure. They’re grooved. They know how to get their new patients. They’ve got their resources, they’ve got their IP, they’ve got their, all that. But if healthcare makes a call with $4 trillion over $200 billion, you’re going to have to heed the call, and you’re unprepared for that.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

There’s wonderful groups out like the Santa Fe Group and Harvard and Michigan who are, done incredible work in showing the healthcare result in terms of chronic diseases and autoimmune diseases and in mental disorders, when you take care of your teeth. There’s a difference between health span and lifespan. So lifespan in our country is about 90, health span is around 67. That’s 23% of the population that we’re paying 90% of the healthcare dollar to. Huh? You put dentistry in the middle of that and things change. So I don’t believe DSOs as they’re structured are going to be able to be sustained in the way they are being built now, because of that future that’s coming at them.

Bill Neumann:

So is there a potential for a large healthcare system to acquire a DSO and roll that in? Or does that not even make sense with the way insurance is structured?

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

What a brilliant question. Yes, of course, they’re thinking like that. There are models out there, interestingly enough. There is one in the Northeast where a fairly substantial DSO, ProHealth and Norton, he’s quite a character. They go set up their groups where the biggest primary care groups are in the close proximity to the hospital. They become the dental arm inside of their own, I like his model, inside of their own sphere so they have some autonomy, but they also have the influx of the influence of the electronic patient record and all that stuff that comes with that particular element.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

Now it’s here. The question is unanswered about what’s the best form of it. You asked me about the DSOs. Most DSOs are structured for scalability, tough to reinvent a fully scaled entity, hard to make that kind of change, to start to think newly about how you’ll deliver your dental care. But I believe it’s coming.

Bill Neumann:

Interesting. Super interesting. This is good stuff. I knew you wouldn’t disappoint, Dr. Cooper.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

Tell my wife.

Bill Neumann:

I’ve got a couple questions, which you probably, you’ve already answered, but maybe I’ll just throw them out to you in case you have anything in addition. We talked to challenges for DSO. So that’s one of the biggest challenges right now. As we see the groups that exist out there… Let me reframe the question. Instead of what the challenges are for DSOs, what are the opportunities for emerging groups, some of these smaller groups that you were instrumental in helping scale up? What’s the opportunity for somebody that’s doctor owned and led and is trying to build a model to accommodate what that future might look like?

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

I’m going to put on my entrepreneurial hat, can’t help it, by the way. The way I see to generate a future business expression is you cannot do it from your head alone, you need to be engaged with others. The future lives in other people’s speaking, but you’re looking for something and when it goes, cling, you go, “Oh, okay.” Dentists talk in a vertical silo. They talk to each other. There are people that are talking outside of that silo to people in healthcare. Dentists are not well trained to communicate beyond their rank, so they avoid it. But that’s where the future lives. One of the biggest breakdowns is the healthcare system is, because dentists are not at the table, because they cannot communicate effectively. Some of the larger ones might be able to do this, get a seat at the table, and as these things unfold and to have influence on the final design or a strategic plan, or cohort vision, or however they do it, but it will unfold. And I don’t know how to predict that unfolding will look like, but it will be.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

It’s just, economics always runs the show. So the smaller ones ought to be talking laterally. They ought to be talking to the people at the hospital or talking to the people who are running diabetic areas or people who are doing cardiovascular. Physicians I talk to know the numbers. They’re pretty good about it. They’re having meetings about this. Dentists don’t attend those meetings. Why not? It’s going to be done to them, or they’re going to participate responsibly in it. They have to decide. That’s going to be the toughest point for them. But yeah, it’d be great if they’d go talk to their local hospital, they all have one, they all have executives they’re probably are treating their children or them, and start saying that, “We ought start talking about a future here. What do you think?” So that’s where I would begin with these smaller groups as you asked.

Bill Neumann:

Yep. You mentioned organizations like the Santa Fe Group, to pay attention to what they’re doing, what Steve Thorn and PDS are doing, ProHealth Dental with what they’re doing, and they’re probably a handful of others. I know there’s West Wind Integrated in Scottsdale, they have the co-located integrated primary care and dental, as well. So there are some people out there. It’s not the majority for sure.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

[inaudible 00:23:32] When I was in the DEO I was trying to bring the future present now, so I had Kaiser Permanente Dental Associates come. And John Snyder’s one of my favorite human beings on the entire planet because he made it happen in a healthcare organization than to earn salary. It’s an ideal place to work for integrative care because primary care in the clinics is with dentists. And so they already have gone through and they use Epic software so they have to be accountable to the patient record. It’s a whole world, but they’ve been doing it for five years. So it’s like, “Oh, okay.”

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

So when I worked with them, it was wonderful. I learned a ton about how to go about integrating this, but Kaiser Permanente is a closed system and dentistry’s an open system. And that’s what, and you mentioned Steve Thorn, well, he’s got 700 practices to $12 million. I don’t know what he’s got now, but he can install all of that and roll it up very carefully because of his resource allocation. But he’s right there. Now, it’s going to be interesting to see how that impacts the whole ADSL model and people who are in it.

Bill Neumann:

Let’s talk about what you’re up to now. We talked about what you had done in the past, what you think the future of the DSO industry medical integration looks like, but you personally go back to those initials again, MBC Consultants Inc. now, but the same MBC, is that still “making brains change” or is that now your initials?

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

It’s still making brains change, mine. My brain needs to change all the time. So what has occurred for me is that I’ve had a parallel life, like most of us, and I got engaged with aging, well, a while back when I was in my early sixties and I was in Nuropa doing a sitting with one of the famous roshies. And it was a three day sitting where you sit and you do contemplation and you look inside and see, anyway, it was wonderful. But I scheduled my plane on a Monday, not for Sunday, and I couldn’t change my reservation. And I’m walking around Nuropa, which is a Buddhist university. And I walked by a door and there’s a rabbi in that place. And that’s unusual, they’re usually in robes, not with a beard in a yamaka. And so I was, coming from my Jewish background, I walked in and there was a rabbi named Zalman Schachter who was teaching a course called Older to Elder.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

And because I love teaching and because I love working with people in a transformational state, I decided to engage with Zalman and learn his models, and also teach his course. So I did a couple of these for dentists to test them out, to make sure that I got guys who were retiring, could not have to go through the incredible discomfort of aging in terms of relevance and identity and of value and the fears that occur because they’re inherent in the system. And then I kind of let it go for a while and then after I sold the DEO I needed to figure out what I was going to do, and what I knew was I’m getting old too. I better figure it out for me so when I have issues, I usually have to work it out with other people.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

So I got together a crew called Seeking Wisdom for a while and we talked about what is the best thing to do? I’m going to make a statement that’s a little radical. If elders ran the world, there wouldn’t be war. That’s who elders are. And what I noticed was that’s a conversation that’s missing everywhere. I work in businesses and I know that I don’t see people my age around the table. I know how the attitudes are about it. Here’s my example. How much time do we have? I don’t want to take too much time if I-

Bill Neumann:

Plenty of time.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

Oh, okay. So I’m looking at all the ads on LinkedIn, because I’m always, who knows? So I’m looking and I’m wondering if I had my resume and it said at the top, 77 year old, how further down on that CV would anybody go? And that sums up what ageism is in terms of that number, and I thought, there are a lot of people I know. If you were on a park bench with Monet, Picasso, Einstein, Margaret Mead, how would you be and what would you talk about? You wouldn’t talk about your sciatica. There wouldn’t be an organ recital like it is. That’s what people are bound to, into that group. They’re herded into a particular way of thinking about aging in our culture, particularly. And I thought, “Hey, you know what, I’m going to do something about that.” So my work now is about altering how people feel and be about aging. And I’m really having a fun time with this because people really need this. How many? Well you go to the ADSO, how many people over 70 were there? [inaudible 00:29:38].

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

Excuse me. What do you think the median age of those regional DSOs doing their $15 to $40 million, a hundred employees. What do you think their age is, average?

Bill Neumann:

You mean the age of the CEOs or just in general, everybody there.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

Just in general.

Bill Neumann:

Probably high 30s, low 40s, I guess.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

And some 50s thrown in there for experience at the operational level or resource level. But there’s a certain level of wisdom that I have come to attain that I’ll call higher wisdom that has nothing to do with knowledge, that has nothing to do with information, that there’s nothing to do with data sets. What it has to do with is how I see the world and the way I see it allows me greater peace, ease, and grace with it than I’ve ever had before. And that’s what elders can bring. And that is certainly missing in most business and political conversations.

Bill Neumann:

It’s some great points when you think about just the perspective that you have, whether it’s historic perspective. So you lived through certain times, like now this inflationary period, for example, this first time a lot of people are going through this. Well, you can remember back if you lived through the Jimmy Carter era and the gas lines when I was a child and sitting in line for gasoline. A lot of people were born after that and never had that experience so there’s these… And you talked about the Vietnam War, going through that experience and most people don’t have that perspective as well.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

Age has its gifts. It’s got its problems, which I know it’s not problem free, but man, you get to a place and all of a sudden… Let me give you a stupid example. I remember, I’m waiting in line at the supermarket and this woman is searching through her purse for whatever they’re searching their purse for. And there are three ahead of me with a lot in their basket and I have some kind of urgency about getting home. And I look at myself and I see the higher level of tolerance that I have for all the people in the line. They all have a life that, it’s not about me as much anymore. So being an elder is really about others in a way that I’m not saying is groveling or, it’s really about appreciating what everybody else is going through without unappreciating yourself. In fact, appreciating yourself more.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

You let yourself be you at a much broader level. You don’t look through other people’s eyes at who you are in the world. You’re an elder. And so, there’s a sense of freedom that comes with this that’s really remarkable. And I’d like the people who are up where we are and exiting. So most of the people who sell DSOs, I like to be the scam only guy, whatever that is. So when people sell their, they get to be a bit up, they get their thing really going. They’re maybe a 10, 12 practices, they’re exhausted. And the bigger boys come in, the Smile brands and all the guys come in to buy those because they can really know how to move them quickly out of, give them the right energy to continue to grow and expand the same store growth. How old are the people that they do that sale?

Bill Neumann:

How old are the people that are actually making the sale from the larger-

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

Yeah. They’ve been a dentist, they’ve gone through, you know this? Yes. They’ve been a dentist. They have worked their way up. They’ve left the chair, they’ve got a little bit of a C-suite or a good C-suite going, they’ve got Margaret, who’s been within 22 years who knows how to run the show. They’ve got supervisors set up, they have their SOPs. They’ve got their stuff together. They use traction as their model for business management. It’s pretty much all there, but they’re getting offers now. The offers are getting more attractive and they’re getting tired. And so they’re going to sell. Now, they may have to stay two to three years just to play, but they’ll have an easier out in a year. How old are those people?

Bill Neumann:

Well, they could be anywhere from early 50s to mid-60s.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

Yep, exactly. I think more in the mid-60 than the 50s.

Bill Neumann:

Okay.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

Okay. And I also think they don’t know what they’re walking into. They think they’re going to go fishing, and maybe for six months seeing their grandkids and going fishing, and dabbling around and taking walks, and going into Paris, and doing what I’ve always wanted to do. But they’ve lived on purpose for so many years that there’s some vibrancy that’s missing in their life because they don’t have a full enough purpose anymore. And elders have a purpose.

Bill Neumann:

And you’re right about that. You hear about people that once they retire and if they don’t have any, especially if they’ve been running a DSO, for example, where they’re high achievers and have been working extremely hard, their identity to a large extent is in their career, the business that they’ve created. And then all of a sudden they don’t have that. And it’s retirement, fishing, boating, whatever. That may work for a short amount of time, but then what? And is that where you come in and you help them identify how to have a fulfilling, whether it’s a retirement or starting another career, is that where your organization comes in?

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

Yes.

Bill Neumann:

Okay. Any tips you can share?

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

You’re not old enough.

Bill Neumann:

Well, just for the audience.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

I’m just kidding. No. What is interesting is the phenomenon of wisdom. You can hear wisdom because you have wisdom, it’s just been covered up. So the wisdom that you have, the higher wisdom that you have is there, it’s not something that needs to be taught to you. It needs to be uncovered in you. And that’s a whole different model in terms of interaction that’s been often used in moving people up the DSO ladder. It’s not that at all. It’s about who I am in the world when I’m not…

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

I had a sweetheart in Bainbridge Island and I would travel like mad to be with her, and I always had to take the ferry. And one day I went up to do the ferry and I put in my money and she handed me a ticket and it said senior. And it was like, “Oh, oh, oh.” So there’s a moment in your time, in everybody’s time, when they have to recognize they’re going to be a senior. Now what? Well, what the culture and society provides for that particular interpretation is not very healthy.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

There is something else that can be developed within people that counterbalances all that stuff that they say about aging. And part of the work that we do is about death and dying. Because the relationship that people have with those two entities is really irrelevant for them, the way they live their lives. And the more intimate you can be with, you’re going to die, I mean, really you’re going to die. Then when you get about 65, that horizon is much closer. I am going to die. How do I be with that? And how do I deal with that? How do I engage in life? Well, if you ultimately generate a relationship with death, it gives you a greater sense of life every day. But how do you do that? And that’s part of our work.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

Most religions will not deliver that. Most, it just won’t. And it’s interesting to me though, what I am finding is there’s such a strong interest in this, that I’m having conversations. I’m going to be 77 this month and I’m thinking, “What am I doing? What am I doing?” Now I have coaches and I have IT guys. And it’s like, “Oh my God, I’m in that again.”

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

But everybody gets old. By 2023, 20% of the population will be over 65. Okay. So what does that mean? If you look at the tipping point, we’re in the major majority, and if you look at the wealth gap, a lot of these people who are in that percentage have minimum of $200,000 for retirement and many strong percentages have over $2 million. There’s power here that’s unutilized. So there’s a lot of opportunity to make real changes in the world. And I can’t stand it, I’ve got to do something. The way the world works, if I can just help it work better, that would be a legacy for me.

Bill Neumann:

Well, this is great. You certainly have done a lot for the dental industry, the group practice side of it in particular, and now on the elder side of things. Dr. Cooper, I’ve really appreciated. I mean, like I said, I met you at least 10 years ago. I remember it fondly. Really my first education in the group practice space.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

Really?

Bill Neumann:

Yeah. Just going-

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

Oh, I want to say one thing. My first conference that you were at, 183 participants.

Bill Neumann:

183.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

I had to remember that.

Bill Neumann:

183, to be exact.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

It was my first one. It was the first conference on group practice for dentists in private practice.

Bill Neumann:

So that would’ve been 2014. Does that sound right, in Scottsdale?

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

Yeah, it sounds right. But anything sounds right at my age.

Bill Neumann:

Well, Dr. Cooper, if anyone wants to get in touch with you, what’s the best way to do that, to find out more about what you’re doing?

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

Oh, that would be fabulous. The best place to go is my website www.requestingwisdom.com. And our focus is on, we’re doing a fair amount of coaching. Most of my clients are DSO regional practices wanting to grow in their capacity, right now in their leadership via coaching. So I have a coaching course going on with about 10 guys and gals who are learning to bring coaching into their culture and into how they lead and manage. And they’re doing great. It’s really working. And then I’m doing this retreat in October, which is the beginning of the conversation about… Because you can’t change people by webinar or seminar. You got to be engaged with this. You can’t imagine, well, you can. But most people bring into a conversation about aging, their family system, the societal view, what they have said forever about aging. And so they have encrusted themselves in a particular view of it. And you have to take off the crust to really get to the heart of it.

Bill Neumann:

So requestingwisdom.com, and that’s how they can find you. And then this retreat is there, what was that?

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

Or LinkedIn.

Bill Neumann:

Or LinkedIn. Okay. And we’ll drop the links for Dr. Cooper’s LinkedIn account, and we’ll also drop the link for the website requestingwisdom.com. When is the retreat coming up? What are the dates of that?

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

October 9th through the 16th.

Bill Neumann:

Okay.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

So let me talk just a minute about it, if you have the tolerance.

Bill Neumann:

Yes.

Dr. Marc B. Cooper:

So, it’s a retreat, that means it’s an intensive, you go there to change who you are as you move into the future, as moving from older to elder and what an elder is and what they contribute and how they live their lives. We have physical activity, we are going to small hikes. Some will, two people, three people right now, have some limitations, but we’ve got that taken care of into the most, well, what I feel the most gorgeous area of the planet is, is with the Colorado plateau. So we’ll go to Bryce and Arches and we’ll do some things inside of nature to be able to communicate more directly with that. And that comes from my experience of working with the Native Americans, because they have a relationship with earth that we just don’t have because we don’t. And then we have my stuff, which is sitting down in a room and really being honest with yourself about your belief systems about aging and why you came up with that and what is it giving you and why are you afraid to believe something else? So we’re going to all that. And then we have some restorative yoga and teaching people how to meditate and breathe and it’s a retreat. And so it’s going to be quite remarkable.

Bill Neumann:

Excellent. Well, we’ll make sure that we have, again, all that information in the show notes. Again, everybody thank you for watching today, or if you’re listening into the podcast, thanks for listening. And Dr. Cooper, a pleasure as always. I appreciate you being part of the Group Dentistry Now Show, and until next time I am Bill Neumann. Thanks everybody.